CRASH! What went wrong?

[washguy]

Iron   oooopsies...I was wrong....just built up another and my thread count on this one like the others is just like your threads at the retainer pin.....I blame the vicodens  <lmao>   Wash

[ironmonster]

Well at least you have something to blame yours on, my stupidity was just that ;-)

[Red_SC]

It hits, everytime you fire it.  Everytime.

At the expense of battering the poor horse again, I'll give my experience.

Once upon a time I was a sponsored 3 gun shooter from a small AR builder. He liked side chargers back before they were common, and his method was pretty crude but effective. He cut a slot down both sides of a machined ('billet') receiver that he made himself, drilled a hole in the carrier, and ran a high strength threaded rod through it with a handle screwed onto each side. The handles were 1/2" thick, and had a small boss that fit down into the receiver slot to hold the handle away from the receiver to keep it from binding. The handle wouldn't hit the receiver when pulled completely to the rear, but after I ran 1000 rounds through it I could see peening from impact with the upper. So, each shot was bottoming the buffer in the tube hard enough to compress it a little and make contact. This was a great, flat shooting rifle, not overgassed at all. Eventually it preened that boss off the handle during a big out-of-state match and started causing malfunctions, fortunately on the last stage.

Side note, after shooting his a while, I sketched a non-reciprocating handle for him that I thought would be perfect, but he never tried to make it. Not long after, JP came out with their side charger of a very similar design.